South Carolina football: Kevin Harris continues trek to 1,000 yards

South Carolina football could have its next 1,000 yd rusher in 2020.

South Carolina football is in a state of change, with head coach Will Muschamp being fired this week. The coaching vacancy could impact the current roster, as we’ve already seen one Gamecock star elect to prepare for the NFL Draft rather than finish out the season. There could be more defects among current and future Gamecocks before season’s end.

Still, amid all of the change and uncertainty, there’s been one constant for the South Carolina football program. His name is Kevin Harris.

Harris is coming off of his best single game performance of the year, rushing for a career high 243 yards and five touchdowns in the 59-42 loss to Ole Miss. The five touchdowns were a school record, and the rushing total was good for fifth all-time.

With the performance, Harris moved into first in the SEC in rushing, surpassing Alabama’s Najee Harris, who had his game cancelled a week ago. Through seven contests, Harris has totaled 817 yards, which is over 100 yards more than his closest competitor, and good for an average of 116.7 yards an outing. With three games remaining, it’s looking more and more likely that Harris will become South Carolina’s first 1,000 yard rusher in nearly a decade.

He also now ranks second in the conference in rushing touchdowns with 13, and could be on pace to break Marcus Lattimore’s single season school record of 17, set back in 2010. And he’d doing this in a shortened, ten-game, all-SEC schedule, which makes it that much more impressive.

Harris making most of opportunity with South Carolina football.

Kevin Harris came to Columbia as a lightly recruited prospect, having landed scholarship offers from Air Force, Army, Cornell, Furman, Navy, The Citadel, and Wofford, among others. The Gamecocks were his only Power Five offer.

He got his first opportunity to line up with the Gamecocks in the second game of 2019, where he rushed for 147 and three scores on just six touches. He’d suffer in injury shortly thereafter, which shortened his season, and he fell back to an unknown among the Carolina faithful.

Fast forward to the 2020 offseason, and most had Harris pegged around third or fourth on the depth chart. Freshman phenom Marshawn Lloyd was expected to come in and start immediately, and Harris was not thought of as being a contributor.

An injury to Lloyd opened up the running back competition, and Harris seized his moment. He’s now having one of the best seasons in school history, even with the rest of the team struggling to a 2-5 record.

He’ll have his work cut out for him over the season’s final three games, as he faces two of the SEC’s best defenses in Georgia and Kentucky to finish the year, but he continues to be the bright spot in a season of gloom.

Much is unknown in the future of South Carolina football, but one thing remains the same, and that’s Kevin Harris’s stardom.